Is It Naptime Yet

I’ve mentioned that the girls are taking swimming lessons right now. Sadly tomorrow is the last day, though I’m somewhat happy at the same time. Since I’m not exactly an early to rise person since I stay up late, I was up till 2 am cutting out an apron last night though usually 12:30 is my bedtime. With not getting up early and on days that we don’t need to go places I let the girls stay in their pajamas till after lunch when we get ready for swimming lessons. I on the other hand do get dressed, most of the time, especially since I had a UPS guy come one day while I was still in pajamas at 11 am. I just don’t see the point to have them get dressed for 3 1/2 hours and then need to change them, though we do that on Sundays but we’re leaving the house so it’s different.

On another note I want to share with you my list of sewing projects, most of which need to be done by next Saturday, all are pretty easy or quick and I’m just excited to make them.

1. Swaddling blankets for a woman in our ward who’s last Sunday it this week, it’s my one thing that needs to be done by this Saturday.
2. Reusable bags. One for Jon and one for a bridal shower I’m going to next Saturday.
3. An apron for the same bride, and it’s in her wedding colors, well it has two of them since I couldn’t remember the other two.
4. I’m altering one of the bridesmaid dresses too, and would like to have that done by next Saturday , though I don’t need it done by then.

Other things: more reusable bags and maybe an apron for me and my niece. Those are to be done sometime this summer. And we’ve decided to make a tent for the top bunk, which I will be sewing and Jon will be building, to help prevent any little heads from running into the ceiling fan. I’m hoping by Christmas we have this ready. (Ignore that we wanted it done by Eden’s birthday. We need to get things out of the shed and out from under our bed so we have space to put things there from the top bunk or maybe even the disassembled crib. Anyone want to help refinish some chairs and put one more coat of shellac on a table? I’m pretty sure I will be in charge of these once it’s cooler, especially since Jon will be busy with work and school during the cooler, but not yet cold months. )

What motivates you? This is a pretty open question. What motivates you to get up in the morning? What motivates you to exercise or eat healthy, neither of the two do I have a relationship with. This is a post about what motivates you to do things, or me to do things, since this is my blog and I’m very narcissistic.

I will not lie. I am most motivated to do things for the praise or approval of other people. Of course I do do things sometimes because they just have to be done, but I don’t always go the extra mile to make sure they’re done in a timely manner. Ask my husband. He has fabric napkins that he wants me to cut down and make into more napkins so he can take them to work, rather than a paper one each day. (I’ve created a go green monster!) These napkins were suppose to be his birthday present, and that was at the beginning of May. I’ve been greatly sidetracked by other projects that also deal with sewing. Plus, after sewing 140 panels I’m not really wanting to sew straight seams into napkins, give me something creative!  I sew for others above my husband or myself, I clean when I know people are coming, probably the things that irks Jon the most, and I love teaching adults because they’re much better at praising appreciating you when you give a good lesson.

Anyways, today I had a moment where I thought the following: Why am I not a better homemaker? If only we really had ordered the brackets for our table and finished it and the chairs so we could have a nice dining set, rather than the old table we bought used and folding chairs. Why isn’t my house cleaner? If only I was motivated to clean while I’m up late, or motivated to get up early.

You ask why I was so down on myself. Well, the one woman whom I think is the epitome of the perfect woman visited my house. I’ve never been to her house, but I know her daughter and her daughter is a very neat woman, so I assume she is too. Plus, she’s so well put together and very elegant and I just don’t know how to act or what to say to her and I often say the wrong thing.

I didn’t know she would be coming over, otherwise I would have told her granddaughter to come over tomorrow while I feverishly cleaned my house tonight. I thought it would be the daughter and the mother coming over, not the granddaughter and the grandmother. She sat right where she could look into my kitchen and see all the dirty dishes that I just hadn’t gotten to this morning. She was very polite, as always, and I think she didn’t  judge me, but lets be real, we all judge a little, but she is what I want to be when I’m older. She’s cool, she dresses her age, but very hip at the same time, she always says the right thing, is very spiritual and I’m sure her house is always neat, though the fact that she has no children at home, no young grandchildren, and her husband works out of state during the week helps it to stay clean.

I’ve just been in a rut since the play. My house was a big disaster then, and is just less of one now. I am still sleeping in too late and only doing what needs to be done, with a few exceptions.

I’ve just decided that I now need to clean my house and get my life together, rather quickly, in case I ever have the epitome of the perfect woman in my house again.

But maybe I should really just do it for my family and myself first.

What motivates you and why?

This week we started swimming lessons for the girls  and they are everyday, and they’re in the early afternoon so about an hour after we finish lunch, if we have it on time, we have to start getting ready for  lessons. It kinda ruins any plans a person might have for doing cleaning or organizing, or even sewing, something I’m somewhat dying to so, I’m just not dying to cut out the fabric.

So we finished the play and then had a week off, but in that week off we cleaned and organized the house on Monday, visited with Jon’s niece on Tuesday. Both days he had off. We sent Jon back to work on Wednesday, I did something, but nothing truly productive, Thursday looked the same. Friday Jon had off for the Holiday and I went to my parents to tidy for the BBQ that would be there next day. (I mostly sat and made remarks on how cheesy Escape from Witch Mountain was, the movie my mom was watching on the Hallmark channel.)  I also ran errands for the party/ BBQ that was on Saturday. Saturday was the Holiday, but I ran more errands that morning, made cupcakes, had Eden take a nap, then we went to the 4th of July BBQ/ birthday celebration for my niece and Lilah.

Then it was Sunday and then the week of swimming lessons started and I’ve gotten nothing done. (I have mopped my floors and been able to keep my living room looking mostly descent, except the fact that I have two girls who leave things around the house. Like yesterday one stripped down in the living room after the swimming lessons so she could take a bath. )

I think my life we never be normal. I’m doomed to a life of chaos and somewhere in there I try to home school and do all the other things a mom and wife has to do.

I want some normalcy. I want to have a whole week with no engagements and no errands to run. Just one week to get my house and home schooling schedule in order.

Nah, I think I like not getting anything done. I’m gonna go play Go Fish with my two girls.

Saturday night was our last show. It was bittersweet to be performing for the last time, but oh what a relief. Saturday night there was a lot of ad lib going on. I guess since it’s the last show, and we’re all a little tired from performing, so the actor’s shake things up.

Kerri was the Wicked Witch of the East leg’s for the play. Friday she decided she was tired of playing it and said we should get a boy to play the legs and I suggested Jeremy. He has very skinny legs so they’d be perfect. He was game and amazingly even fit the shoes!

Here’s a picture of him with the striped thigh highs and shoes. It was a riot in the dressing room when he came in wearing these.

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One thing the leads decided to do was respond to the guard after he asked them to read the sign. You know, he says “Cant’ you read the notice?” and they say “What notice?” “The one that’s as plain as the nose on my face.” Instead they responded “Oz” very slowly, since the doors had OZ painted on them. Shawn, the guard was definitely caught off guard and had to recover from it but he did a pretty good job.

The main prank happened at the end of the Merry Old Land of Oz. We hear a loud noise and then the witches music plays. This is when we see the smoke sign written by the Wicked Witch of the West. We all look stage left towards one of the spotlights, but this night the spotlight person had made a sign that read ‘Dorothy’s #1’ and was waving it around. It was a little hard to keep in character while watching this through the whole scene, but I definitely laughed slightly when Dorothy decided to run with it, and instead of reading the  smoke as ‘Surrender Dorothy”, she said “Dorothy’s #1.” There was silence on the stage, except a chuckle from Kerri, but Tin Man chimed in “I think it says surrender Dorothy.” and we finished the scene.

Those are the two main things I knew about that changed besides adding a line here or there. Jon said it made for an entertaining night and the audience seemed to be just fine with it. Everything that was changed added to the show, not completely ruined it. I guess it’s a lesson that on closing night after a week and a half run it’s usually just a fun night for the actors.

Here are some pictures with cast members before my hair became extremely flat from my Winkie hat and some afterwards with the girls.

Me, Diana, Sara. We’re on the Oz set. Sara designed the flags and I sewed them and they added the fabric and embellished the trellis behind us. These girls are wonderful and they happen to live close by so I hope to see them before the next play.

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Me and Kerri. I love Kerri. We kidded around and had a lot of fun. I was next to her in the dressing room and since she wore fake eyelashes I decided to wear some also. I wanted to be just like Kerri because she’s wonderful.

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Lisa and me. Lisa and I sat next to one another during rehearsal’s. She’s a doll and a newlywed, like had only been married a month when rehearsals started, and still decided to do the play!

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Me, Lilah and Dena backstage. Dena was so nice and was always so helpful. She was one of the choreographers, as was Kerri, and she stood on the sidelines as we did the Jitterbug each night and always cheered us on and sang since we were always to breathless to sing while we danced.

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A tired Eden and Lilah with me and the Appletrees. (Kelsey, Sara, Diana, and Crystal.)

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Eden with Kerri, the head Winkie guard. Her staff was named Willie.

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Us with the witches. Jen, the wicked witch, did such a great job acting. Each night her death was the highlight of the play. Not because she died, but because of how well she died. There were many times I wanted to laugh because she did it with such comical grace, but I was able to keep face, or turn my head a little more away from the audience if I did crack a smile.

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Lion (Jerry), Tin Man (Josh), Eden, Me, Lilah, and Scare Crow (Steven.)

Jerry and Josh are brothers, though they’re so different, both in good ways, that you wouldn’t know they are brothers. (I know they look very similar in this picture, but they look different enough that you wouldn’t call them brothers right off either. )

I was in charge of helping Lion change every night to Zeke. His wife was always back there helping, which I’m not sure made it more or less awkward to be taking off and putting her husband’s clothes back on?  He was very modest though and it went so fast that it didn’t really matter.

Also, since I had a basket on stage for the Oz scene I was in charge of Steven’s patches that we took off during the sprucing up scene in Oz. He sometimes threw me off since some nights he wore three patches and other nights he wore four, and once a patch got left on stage so I was never certain if I lost one or if he wasn’t wearing all of them.

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Dorothy (Jessica) with the girls and me.

Jessica was so sweet and wrote a little personalized note to each cast member. Some of the things she wrote in my letter was what a hot mom I am (I know, I know, stop it.) and how darling my two daughters were. She told Lilah that she was the cutest lullaby girl and that she loved her curls for the play.

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Jon’s niece Shauntae with the girls and me.

Shauntae drove down from Logan just to see the play. Well, maybe not just for the play but luckily it was while the play was showing and she was able to see it! Jon came with her Saturday night since I had bought two tickets and he missed Friday’s performance.

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After the play and picture taking Jon took both girls home while I helped clean up the theater. Then some of the cast went to the Cheesecake Factory for food. I had also gone out Friday night with a few cast members so I just ordered a piece of Cheesecake on Saturday night. It was definitely fun to be with other cast members without the stress of getting ready or hurrying out the door to leave. (We had to be out of the theater by 9:45 pm every night, except closing night for take down, or their was a fine.)

I really loved being in the play and already miss some of the people I met. I hope to do it again and again.

I need someone to come clean my house. Any takers?

Jon’s home for the next two days, to use up leave once more, and I’m sure I won’t get more than dishes and laundry done and maybe the piles of stuff from my living room removed that are from the play. When he’s home I just don’t get much done, though he is cleaning as I type this. We’re also spending part of Tuesday with his niece and her boys, so no one judge me on my crazy house till the end of the week, since I’m probably going to not be home too much anyways. I have things I want to start doing now that our summer can finally begin.

I am happy the play is over, though kinda sad too. I met some wonderful people and amazingly two live close by me and hopefully we can get together before another play begins.;)

I loved performing every night. I was always too shy to do anything like this when I was younger, so I hope this helps my girls have some extra confidence by being in these plays. We were able to sell out the theater about 4 times, that I know of, and most nights we were pretty full so we think, or hope, that we can do one next year.

I have lots of pictures and stories of things that happened on the last night. Jon loved the show since there was more improv and more punch lines that were not in the movie, which he has seen a million times lately. Even though I’m sad Lilah was sick on Friday night, or the night my mother-in-law came with Dara and Jason, I’m happy Jon got to see the fun closing night play, and I think I’ll make sure to get him tickets for that night in the years to come.

I’m off to wash dishes and start making my taco salad for FHE. Life never stands still for long.

This past week has been hectic. We had rehearsals or the play to perform almost every night, except Friday. The play totally wipes Lilah and me out and neither of us are very useful till 9 am. Then with needing to bathe her and get curlers in and then I shower in the afternoon before we leave, we have like 5 hours of the day to do something. Lets just say we haven’t done much of any house work because we’ve been to Chuck E Cheese for Lilah’s birthday, the mall twice to buy clothes or return clothes for Jon and my dad, Costco, and UNLV for some family time at the museums. Even if we were home there is so much to do that there’s never enough time to do it, but just play catch up so we actually have clean dishes to eat off of and clean clothes to wear. Jon  has also been home, which is both helpful and not. It was his vacation so I was trying to let him relax as much as possible. He wanted to be gone during the day, but didn’t have anywhere to go, so he was home but not required to do much unless he wanted to. The day I went to Costco he did some tidying around the house because I was torn between staying home to clean and going shopping, but we made a deal that I would take the girls with me and he would clean. He also creates so many more dishes when he’s home so I’ve yet to catch up on dishes, and I’m sure I’ll be behind for part of the week. So fun.

I admit I look forward to him going back to work and since there aren’t any pressing things to do this week besides the play I want to clean my house or at least get caught up on some of my chores. Speaking of chores, I need to wash dishes so I can make a nice Father’s Day meal and actually be able to serve it on regular plates and not paper tableware.

I’ve be done working in a sweat shop, I mean making costumes, for just a few hours and I already feel lost. I just don’t know what to do with myself. Sure I have a ton of things to do, but uh, I don’t want to. I think I need a list to remind me of all that needs to be done and to possibly ignore at times. Yes, I’ll make a list and you can all be happy that you don’t live in my chaotic home or have my super good at procrastinating skills, though some of you may be able to surpass my list. Remember it’s not a contest about who has more to do, this is all about me of course.

First I need to blog about the following:

Pictures for Part 2 of Cathedral Gorge.
The Shark reef and pictures from the shark reef.
The ladybug release from like April. I think Jon still needs to create a way for me to stream video now that I can’t use google video anymore. Wah.
Pictures of the costumes and maybe my crazy sewing corner in my living room. It’s chaos total chaos I tell you.
May birthday’s.

Things to do around my house:

Finish Spring Cleaning. Wait maybe I should just sweep and mop my floors and clean our gross bathrooms. The girls have taken to washing their feet in the sink and lets just say they leave nice dirty foot prints around the sink and on the toilet lid and on the floor and in my hall way. It’s great.
Wash and put away winter blankets. We were still using them when I started sewing a bazillion weeks ago but I haven’t gotten them stored away for the winter yet.
Clean up my bedroom. This encompasses a lot. Like cleaning the area that was storing the boxes for Jon’s solar oven that he needed to make which were holding the blankets I needed to put away along with clothes that I laid there. The boxes were also hiding our ever mounting shred pile, but he has since made his solar oven and left it even more chaotic after he moved everything I had put on top of his boxes.
Clean sewing corner and figure out where to put the extra fabric. (Anyone want to buy 8 yards of black fabric or 6 yards of white for just $1.50 a yard plus tax.)
Clean every corner of my house.
Clean off top bunk bed so Lilah can sleep there before she turns 7. Hopefully we get it cleaned off before Eden turns 4. (cross your fingers.)
Organize the girl’s clothes. Arg, they have so many clothes.
Organize everything so we can find spots to put the stuff on the top bunk- though I think we might need to buy some outside storage and something for the inside.
Clear off the changing table so we can actually get rid of it, like I wanted to six months ago.

Things I want to do:

Make reusable bags since ours that are made from plastic bottles are all falling apart. We think the hot car weakened them.
Make a robe.
Make an apron for me and Shauntae and something for Carolyn.
Get the girls in swimming lessons since Lilah fell in my SIL’s jacuzzi when no one was watching. Not a very proud parenting moment for me.
Read the books my husband got me for my birthday.
Start home schooling again. Lets just say our Spring Break went a little long and now we don’t get a summer break.
Have a clean house again, but without doing all the work. Any volunteers?

See, now I feel so much better writing it down so I can avoid this post since it’s really all very overwhelming to look at.

I think I’ll watch Oprah and just have pizza for dinner before we go to practice.

Or however you say finish in Spanish.

I am finished with the Winkie costumes! It’s a good thing because I said I would be bringing them tonight, but I knew I’d be finished by tonight, so that’s why I said it!

I am so happy to be done with the 15 costumes! I had some frustrations and things took longer than planned, but they are done.

My mother-in-law asked me if I would do it again and I said yes, not because I like the hours of sewing and the neglecting of my house, or the stress of making sure things met the director’s approval, but because I want the play to look nice and costumes are a part of that.

Not all the costumes are being made under one person. In fact one thing I’ve learned is costumes can come out very different if two people are making them. People just interpret things differently.

Now I can relax and put the final touches on my Ozian Costume to help it look nice on stage.

I now need to take a shower and feed my children lunch.

Remember to go to the website to buy tickets, or you can purchase them that night with cash or check. Also kids who will sit on a lap are free!

www.rsaf.net

Monday watched Matilda. Did housework watched Dancing with the Stars.

Tuesday ran some errands. Found fabric for the Winkie vest very cheap, thanks Anna. Had lunch with Anna. Ran more errands came home. Did some more dishes. Had practice for the play and watched Dancing with the Stars, the results.

Wednesday. Sewed panels for the Winkie costume and ignored children. Anna and I are recreating a costume from on-line, but it’s gonna be slightly different and a lot cheaper, but only because our time is free.  My mom’s sewing machine started going a little crazy on me after I wound a bobbin. I got very frustrated when something that should only take eight minutes took thirty-five. I figured out the problem and for the most part fixed it. It still sometimes goes wonky and it still kills me.

Thursday. Sewed a little. Ignored children. Went to Home on the Range so I could have some down time.  Bought milk and elastic. Sewed and let children watch PBS. Made my skirt to show director. I didn’t like it but she was OK with it. (I just think I made the panels a little too narrow but they still work.) Had practice and learned that I can’t march and move my arms in a specific way at the same time. I’m so uncoordinated.

Friday dropped children off at Sam’s. Sewed from 10:30 to 1:45 with a few breaks to play scramble on facebook and eat lunch. Ran out of thread for gray panels. Figured out that I needed 3 times the amount of thread than what I bought. (Panels use a lot of thread.) Sewed on black panels till 1:45. Went to JoAnn’s for thread, picked up children. Read to children then let them watch PBS. Sewed more panels and then made dinner and relaxed for the night, even though I should have sewn. (It’s just hard when you sew at the table and have to clean off your sewing area every time. It makes the 30 minutes of sewing not worth it.

Today I had practice. I need to prepare my lesson and then take a shower. Jon and I have a hot date to see the new X-Men movie.

Tomorrow I will sew. I know it’s Sunday but this is service so I think it counts as a worthy Sunday activity.  My goal is to finish the skirts by Saturday. We’ll see if it happens. There are also now 15 Winkie’s, not just 14.

I think the hardest thing is the panels. I’m devoting so much time but it feels like I’m getting nothing done since I don’t have any skirts to show for it, except mine, which was the sample skirt. I actually have made two sample skirts but the first one didn’t work out and thus I needed to re due some things and I just wasn’t able to start again till this week.

I think once the panels are sewn things will come together quickly. I hope anyways.

We have an old air conditioner that goes with our old house. About a year and one month after we moved into the house we had air conditioning trouble. I was so worried that we’d have to replace it, and only a month after the home warranty expired.

We had an air repairman out, in fact they had just replaced my in-laws air conditioning, and after paying a lot, but not as much as a new unit would cost, we were wrangled into a semi-annual air conditioning service agreement. For a small monthly fee they come out twice a year to check the AC unit, fill fluids and apparently tell me how desperately we need a new unit and how it’s going to die on us any at time, so we should replace it now. We also get some kind of discount on repairs and service but, since they haven’t needed to repair it in nearly 3 years, we’ve yet to see those savings.

Since we no longer have a home warranty and the AC unit is one of those big expenses we figure it’s worth having them come and service it twice a year even if it involves dealing with annoying service men.

Some air service men I like. One told me we had a very old and inefficient unite, but if we look around to the other roof tops all our neighbors also have the original units, so even though it’s lasting longer than it should, all our neighbors units are also, so we can continue to use it and it’ll go when it goes and just save for when we have the large expense.

The last service man, who came in September for the heat check-up and this April for the summer check-up, told me how old and inefficient our unit is. It’s fan is caked with gunk and it’s leaking some fluid. I just think, you’re here to service and help it stay running, why are you not even giving me an estimate of how much it would cost to have you de-gunk my fan or fix the leak? Why is it always ‘you’re air conditioning is going to die anytime now, you better replace it now before the summer really sets in.’ (Last April the service man told me it was going to die and it would be more expensive because China was importing all the steel for the Olympics so the price of steel was going up and so was the price of units. )

Anyways, they also suggest how we can save so much money with a new unit, blah, blah, blah. Not that we don’t want to save money, but uh, a new unit is not going to cut our electricity bill in half because we also have a drafty house and a not well insulated attic.

We are thinking of getting a new unit so we can see some of the savings while we’re in the house. We’ll probably be keeping the house to rent later and eventually the AC unit will need to be replaced. But I’ve also had some expensive test denied by our insurance and our dishwasher is leaving stuff on our dishes regularly, and we pre-rinse really well AKA washing the dishes before we wash the dishes. So we might have some expensive tests to pay for, though I’m appealing it, and we might need a new dishwasher and our AC is going to die on us any day, though I’m confident it will last another summer. (knock on wood.) We also just paid a lot for the yearly ‘fix Jon’s car problems.’

We have savings to pay for all these things, but it’s the paying for all these things at the same time that gets to me.

I think my biggest pet peeve of the AC service man is his use of fear to sell me an air conditioning unit and the fact that last summer they predicted it would die, and it didn’t, this winter it was going to die, and it didn’t, so it’s still going to die this summer, and it might, but do I really only buy a new unit because I don’t want to have a house without air in the summertime? Yeah it’s gross, extremely uncomfortable, and I would probably be found at friends houses all day, but it’s not the end of the world. (Ask me again when it happens and how freaked out I was three years ago.)

How do you respond when people use fear or some other negative technique to get you to do things?

I also resist popular things, like Twilight and couponing. Not that I don’t like mindless books or saving money, I just hate that I must read something or I must do this so I can buy over processed foods for nearly nothing and store them in my already small house. (I’m overgeneralizing, I know not all coupons are for the bad foods and Twilight might be enjoyable to me. I just don’t like it when I must do something. In fact, maybe I’ll stop blogging because it’s become so popular, but I was doing it before it was so big. )

How I hate feeling pressured.